


P.O.W.

by wolfwars



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Dark fic, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:08:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfwars/pseuds/wolfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone always thought it was Root who was the most like a machine. POST "If-Then-Else" and Shaw is alive but is still detained by Samaritan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	P.O.W.

**Author's Note:**

> Phewwwww! Sorry if I messed up any of the details we learned about in tonight's episode! Also warnings because it gets dark in this piece and sadly not a lot of romance or R/S just yet! I've been really toying with the idea of what might happen if Shaw were to become a P.O.W under Samaritan. Hopefully you guys enjoy! And I'll be posting more soon... (A few months pass between the moment Shaw is captured and the story begins.)

 

** Part I **

The Asset. 

 

Shaw felt rough arms grab her and shove her away from the stock offices’ room. She groaned but even as the bullets had hit her—she had been calculating her own damages. She was getting woozy. Would need blood. Shaw stared Martine down and she’d seen the French lackey flinch and _yes_ , the blondie seemed to biting on the bit to get the chance to put another bullet between her eyes—but instead, the cold agent received a command and then turned and shot down the cameras and Shaw thought about Finch’s desperate little machine trying to put eyes on her.

 

Her eyes closed.

 

She was going to pass out. She was going to miss this next part.

 

_Damn_.

 

 **

Root threw a black ski mask on the table in front of him.

“You said you wanted to help me,” John turned around to look at Root, noticing her eyes not quite matching her more playful tone. They looked too dark, dead as she said, “Samaritan wants us to come out and play. I want to… _we need to_ …”

John nodded and grabbed the mask.

 

“What do you need Root?” 

They loaded up on weapons from his arsenal and they steal a nice ride. John momentarily thought about Shaw, how she always drove (but would sometimes hand over a pretty weapon to keep him occupied while she did) and then he pushed that thought away. It was too painful to remember.

 

(But he should have known Root would demand to drive the car too.)

 

As they passed by the city buildings, his stomach churned with old memories. Jessica, Carter… he knew Finch was backing away from them for now—living with his immeasurable, self-indulgent guilt somewhere off in his ivory tower. Nothing, it seemed, could corrupt the man. No death, no losses. He was always ready to make plans and act ‘rational’.

John dragged the body out of the car, shoving it through the pieces of glass and smoked-rubber. Fumes radiated off the car.

 

Root hovered behind him, stiff but impatient.

She aimed her gun down: 

 

“You know what I like about a pair of boys in black?” She leaned down and John pressed his hand tighter on the man’s throat, keeping him still. Root dug through his pockets until she found a cellphone. The man’s body shook underneath John’s grip but the shaking did nothing but hit against the corpse of his partner, that was still trapped underneath the wrecked car.

 

“The harder you try to be conspicuous, the easier you are to find.” She eased the phone into her pocket and then seemed to go off somewhere in her own head, stopping to listen to the sounds in her earpiece… John waited, though. He let her ‘drive’ this too.

 

Root’s expression went from confusion to anger to… dead again.

 

“She says we don’t kill him.”

 

 

*****

 

Everyone had thought Root was the most “machine-like” of the team.

They just hadn’t known yet. Hadn’t known what Shaw really was, what she could really be on the inside. And part of that was her fault because she’d been the one showing bits and pieces but not the whole image. Not what she could really do if she wanted to.

The asset jammed the corner of her fist into their target’s face. She hit him once in the masseter muscle then drew her fist back and hit until she drew more blood from the man’s nose. It was a fun little game they were playing, “You talk or I hit”, there was also the sequel, “Start fucking talking or I cut off ears” and you can imagine what a lovely trilogy the whole process could become… Shaw wasn’t one of the finer technicians when it came to torture, not going to bore her mark to death by talking to it all day like Martine. She saw how badly that had gone firsthand. 

She brought her fist back up to haul the man up by his shirt collar. She stared him down, waiting for him to stop blubbering and talking nonsense so she could get real answers.

"C’mon Frederick, I thought we were starting to have a real…  _connection_.” She grinned at him and moved to admire the damage she’d done. She could keep him alive for years if she wanted to. Actually, she’d said a little oath about doing that once. But the Hippocratic Oath had long become irrelevant since the time she was issued her first military rifle. The voice of her boss whispered into her earpiece, “Two guards by the door.”

Shaw lifted her target easily and shuffled into the shadowed-spaces of the room around them, she tightened a hand around his mouth and dragged him away, crouching down low in a tight grip to conceal them both. If he shouted she could knock him unconscious with one nerve pinch but she didn’t see the point in creating dead weight just yet.

"Guard One coming in."

She waited and saw as the door slowly opened. The guard peeked in and then closed it again. Shaw waited for her next orders.

"Back door, shoot lobby guard. Gun in fire extinguisher stairway."

Shaw shot back up, brought her gun to the man’s back and shoved him against the wall, hard.

She looked at her mission at hand, a wimpy computer programmer with too many close relatives in town (even a sad little granny at the old folks home, ‘awww, a  _granny_ ' she'd muttered as she'd waved the file at Martine. Martine only standing, stoic and cold in response. No sense of humor these  Samaritan operatives…)

"Just a peep… a single sound and" she moved the gun roughly from the base of his spine to the little patch of bones she knew so intimately, curved, and twisted with precious bundles of nerves, "And I’ll still be asking questions but those pretty legs of yours won’t be moving so much." Her voice came out rough, hoarse to her own ears. Empty.

The man winced and she felt his body shaking nervously as she ushered him through to the stairwell. 

She shoved him away for a second and punched through the emergency glass of the box positioned on the entrance wall. She found a pair of gloves sitting at the bottom of the case, tugged them on and then shoved her own gun into the back of her waistline then lifted the new weapon. She didn’t know who’s name it was registered to or who Samaritan wanted to pin this next murder on. Didn’t ask.

She took the weapon, grabbed her mark and kept down the stairs until she saw a door. She swept off to the side and examined the room through the glass window panel on the metal door. A few feet away. Legs shuffling.

Shaw rushed through and kept her man in front of her, choosing to shoot over his side when she saw the guard turning and fumbling for his own weapon. 

One shot. Down.

Shaw dropped the gun beside him and continued out the door where she knew the van would be waiting. 

Her boss was always right after all. 

"Nice work, Sameen." Greer rubbed his palms together and Shaw could see genuine ease radiating off the man. She brushed past Martine and another operative, new to Samaritan but very well paid from what she can see, and stood by his side. Unlike the rest of the statues working under his employ, (as far as she could tell) Greer seemed the most alive. Even when he was curt she could see his thoughts turning through his head. Productive. Detached. Maybe a little like herself.

But he wasn’t the ultimate authority here. She’d been reminded that plenty. Greer  _could_  give orders but he was just a superior who worked below her other, far more powerful, superior. Greer had relented his power in the way that she’d seen Finch tie it up in complicated knots and haul it away somewhere where he couldn’t touch it, where even his creation could never go off leash. 

She was off leash (for now) and that’s how she wanted to keep it.

"I used Frederick to get through security, Sir, and acquired the files to Samaritan’s disc." She showed him the supplies she had on hand at all times, an ear piece and mike piece to communicate with Samaritan, a drive that automatically locked everything so that only admin and the computer could access it. She’d been promised it was to protect public safety, that only Greer and Samaritan could see everything they do. Honestly, she didn’t really care anyway.

Greer nodded, but she could feel how pleased he was underneath it all.

"Excellent work, Sameen." Her superior was brewing a hot cup of tea in a pot next to his worktable. He pulled out two cups, nice China silverware as far as she could tell, and saw him put loose strands of Chai into a strainer before pouring the hot water everywhere. He smiled up at her from his work, almost boyish in his grin. Sometimes she wondered if maybe Greer was too trusting.

She’d gotten him down as M16 the day he’d come down to the locked cell to “meet” her. He was charming, she could tell, probably once very handsome. Not free of emotions, no, he tended to ramble on and on about his old war stories. Always charming, always trying to build a stern yet important  _rapport_ with his ‘assets’. He wanted to turn her. 

 

"Here you are, darling." He passed her the cup then turned to face the computer’s large screen. The data downloaded quickly to the main hard drive, in a flash of seconds.

Images flashes quickly and finally another photo paused and she saw a picture and name flash up:

_Sarah Jones. Red hair. Age: 33._

The woman’s face was suspiciously nondescript. More details flashed by and Shaw listened to the voice letting out even more details in her ear. 

Greer leaned back in his chair and took a sip from his cup, “I suppose a hero’s work is never done, is it?” His eyes turned to inspect Martine and Shaw who both stood silently in front of the screen.

"I suppose it’s… just a matter of— Oh?" Greer turned to look down at the flashing screen on his phone, "Shaw? You prefer her?"

Shaw didn’t have to turn to see Martine go stiffer. It had been slowly growing like this for months: the replacements. Samaritan  _preferred her_. It preferred something it had already broken in. Something that already belonged to it. 

 

Greer acted innocent as he assigned the case exclusively to her but she could see that hint of a smile perked up behind his lips. Amused. Endlessly in love with his creation.

 

Afterwards (and when Greer’s eyes were off of them), Martine grabbed her arm roughly and shoved her against the hallway’s wall. Shaw put on her ‘Shaw’ act, raising her shoulders up confidently and rolling her eyes.

"Jealous, Ally McBeal? Maybe you need to step up your game." 

"At least I’m the one getting paid," Martine flashed teeth and grinned. 

"Good. Spend it on a hair dresser so you can touch up that shitty dye job you’re sporting," Shaw motioned to the girl’s terrible faux-blonde hair hoping that the statement could speak for itself.

Maybe the woman thought Shaw cared that there was no paycheck in it for her. It was beyond paychecks now. She didn’t have the luxury of being ‘hired’ and paid for. Her pay was her upgrade to sleep in a room instead of a cage floor. Plus, no matter how much they paid Martine it didn’t make her crappy spy skill set worth the money. Shaw had known absolute nobodies at ISA who were better. 

But she smiled, anyway. Grinned, acted like she felt something or another. It was so easy to lead Martine away from knowing a goddamned thing about her, like swinging carrots on a rope.

Martine’s eyes narrowed. She tightened her grip on Shaw’s arms. Created a few tiny bruises on the skin.

"Do you know what I wish, Sameen?" She leaned in to whisper the rest in Shaw’s ear: "That I’d broken you even more than we already did. That I’d really hurt you."

Shaw laughed.

"Yeah, Martine?" She rubbed a hand over the one clenching into her arm, "Does that keep you up at night?"

Martine sneered then released her and walked away. Shaw let out a breath. Not because she was scared but because pretending to be her old self was starting to become exhausting.

But Martine and Greer breaking her? That’s a laugh.

She didn’t ‘break’ from the torture, she tore apart and bore herself new parts again. (Stronger parts). The agents and their talking and their ‘appeal to her humanity’, ‘to her fear’ were about as effective as putting a hissing cat in the cage with her would have. She didn’t have humanity to appeal to. She ~~wasn’t~~   _isn’t_  human.

 

_But then there was Samaritan._

 

She’d never really understood why some people felt so connected to ‘the machine’, a piece of glorified-bleeding heart scrap metal crap. It wasn’t real. She didn’t see how it magically became a ‘she’. That was someone else’s nonsense. 

Shaw felt a pang in her chest. Residual from somewhere her new skin hadn’t grown over yet. Old aches.

She touched her earpiece, almost consciously. No, but Samaritan. It was a he. She knew better now.

It had been him who stripped her. Who knew exactly how to go through every piece of her, cut a perfect incision and keep on going. He was the one who knew what she was, how she ran, how to ‘talk’ to her. The other pieces of his puzzle, pawns, were nothing. When she wouldn’t listen to him anymore, refused to even— they just had ‘installed’ him instead. Ripping into her ear and keeping her earpiece  **mandatory**. She’d just take it out otherwise, he’d told her afterwards. 

 

She’d done her fair share of killing, her fair share of torturing. She’d been in locked cells, stuck into the holding prisons of countless international ships, crime syndicate hostage, bonefied government lackey-maybe worth something… she’d been locked up before. Hell, she’d even done some of the more inhumane tactics. There was more than face pounding, there was narcotics— getting someone hooked to drugs saved you time when it came down to it. People might say no because they felt loyal or because they more afraid of their bosses, but they’d break down if you got them hooked. It was too easy. She’d seen it a million times.

_Samaritan hadn’t even needed to do_  that. 

 

How do you fight against a God? Someone who knows every intimate detail of your life? Someone who can calculate action you will take, find every little defense you might build for yourself (even for just a minute of piece) and tear it down immediately? When she’d tried to remove him…

Shaw blinked, feeling suddenly too tired to think. The familiar hum of her body slowing down. Just remembering it felt too strong. Flashes burnt back and forth through her mind and she had to let it go.

Instead, she moved to her cot and lay down. 

Her boss gave her more instructions. More codes and names and places. Then a beeping, high pitch played in her ear. 

"This makes any user instantly sleepy." The voice instructed.

Shaw’s eyes fluttered back and forth. She felt herself push over the edge into sleeping, curling against her cot and her back shoved against the wall as hard as it would go.

"Goodnight, Sameen."

 

~~***~~

 

It was another quiet night underneath the bustling city of New York, the little lair the Machine had found for them and made a temporary shelter out of camera black space. Finch was talking to Reese while Root leaned back against the wall of the subway, arms crossed tightly. Finch had been watching her for weeks now when she was around but he and John had absolutely no clue where it was she went after she’d leave their meetings. He only hoped it was somewhere safe.

“I set up a new program within the machine, one to calculate the changes made in the stocks and the overall economy—the drops and the rises. Samaritan is pushing it up and down to get what it wants… which is a terrifying thought.” Finch said solemnly.

Keeping the country’s economy at gunpoint was nothing new to politics (any capitalist regime would use their lock over the country to keep certain laws or amendments from passing or to lobby new ones.) But Finch reasoned that keeping an eye on it might help reveal light on some of Samaritan’s plays.

John watched Root from across the room. Over the past few months he’d noticed all the changes and he’d been in the room with her during those interrogations… except interrogations would be too kind, they were tortures and he’d stood aside and suddenly it had felt just like it had when he worked with Stanton. John might be doomed to repeat the pattern of enabling violent tortures.

 

Finch didn’t have a leash on either of them. 

But things _changed._ Because they had nothing. They’d made nothing of it. Shaw was still lost. 

When they’d ‘changed focus’ (as Finch politely called it) to working on numbers—a very brief stint that earned Finch a lot of flack because he was a damned moron if he thought they were going to work on irrelevant with Finch even as the Machine slowly pressed more and more for them to do it, suddenly hiding irrelevant numbers in false Intel so that they’d go to a hotel, looking for Lambert or even Martine and find a perp or a victim.

“The program will be done soon but we need to keep evaluating other weaknesses… I think it’s also long due that we find another set of hands to help. Someone trained. Reese, I’m sure you have some old—”

 

“Done.” John nodded, quickly.

 

He saw Root tense and hold herself tighter. Her body had lost weight. Her eyes were constantly dark and tired. She’d become angry and then stoicly cold and mad and violent and more angry… and then she’d just ‘turned off’.

She stopped talking and she only met to work on destroying Samaritan and then she was gone again.

To wherever it is she went. 

 

Bear quietly plopped down by her feet and let out a small, shallow wine. Root ignored it and walked over to Finch’s computer.

“I’ll take a copy back and help you write the code.”

 

Finch handed it over tentatively and Root pocked it and walked off.

 

***

Shaw found Claire’s room and knocked twice.

She heard a quiet shuffling behind the door and then heard a meek: “Come in” so she stepped in and past a large pile of clothing on the floor and strode over to the hacker's desk of tech goodies.

“What’s up, freakazoid?” she said in ways of greeting. Claire stood up and removed the blocky pair of headphones that red-brown hair. It was always tied up and pushed out of the way, much like how Shaw had worn her hair before it was cut. 

“Nothing, Agent blockhead. Just Samaritan.” She pushed her laptop a ways a little bit and leaned back in her rolling chair.

They both had rooms close to Greer’s ‘Secret Shadowy Computer HQ’ but Claire’s was a bit nicer. Small but small in the way a college dorm might probably be. Not a cot but a bed. 

“He’s talking to me right now too…” Shaw drifted off, listening to the voice in her earpiece. _Asset has dilated pupils. 3 hours of sleep. Computer is at…_ “Oh? Tell Claire that she shouldn’t call the armed maniac names? Okay.”

 

Claire almost smiled, her lips hinging up just a bit. And strangely that was progress, almost made Shaw feel bad about lying to the kid all the time.

“You’re here because you need this.” Claire reached out into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a small disk drive.

“Thanks.”

“It’s a virus,” Claire turned away and looked back at her computer, eyes becoming lost in her other work on the black screen, she spoke without looking, “It’ll kill anything.”

_Anything?_ Shaw’s mind wondered but she knew she wasn’t supposed to wonder things. So she switched over to listen to the voice: _Go to 5 th Street and meet operative_.

 

 “You’re wish is my command,” she said into her mouthpiece. Claire peeked over, curious for only a second before typing more code into the computer furiously.

 

Once out the door, Shaw asked Samaritan another question: “Probability of asset’s death?” 

She walked briskly to the elevator and waited to see if her boss was going to fess up or not. _Asset level of death probability: High to Very High_.

 

Once inside the elevator, Shaw shifted from one foot to another and asked casually: “Is that the desirable outcome?”

 

She looked around at the cars, fingers stroking one that caught her eye in particular. A beautiful piece from Britain. Paint glossy under her touch and the leather of the seats already alluring…

_Asset failure, 50 to 59%, desirability: 90%_.

 

Shaw decoded the machine’s words to mean: The asset is doing poorly but Samaritan still has high hopes for her. Funny, because Shaw was pretty sure Claire seemed to be doing a good job what with the busy typing and the lack of sleep and so on…

“What are my levels of productivity?”

“92.666773334%”

 

Shaw nodded to one of the cameras looking at her and even gave it a somewhat knowing smile.

“And you didn’t even handpick me from a selective group of competitors, Samaritan. Maybe you’re good with taking chances.”

 

Instead of engaging her in any more cute small talk, Samaritan began flooding her ear with more information. She opened the car door and saw a sleek dress wrapped in plastic and a pair of boots she knew she could run in—also a leg holster for a small knife and a way too expensive jacket to put over it all. Shaw had picked a car at random… and Samaritan had known exactly what car she would choose before she even knew.

 

Shaw drove off in the direction of the route that the machine had told her would get her to 5th street the fastest.

 

***

John walked outside of Shaw’s old apartment. He should have known.

 

_“Root?”_


End file.
